Derek Strange is a black ex-cop in Washington D.C. who now makes a
living running his own private detective agency. He is hired to
investigate the killing of an off-duty black policeman by a white police
officer -- a killing that was supposedly accidental, but that has opened
difficult questions about racism on the force. In the course of that
investigation the white officer, Terry Quinn, becomes Strange's friend
and then his partner. Together they try to uncover what really happened
that night, when Quinn came upon a confusing and treacherous crime
scene. Along the way they confront the kingpins of a flourishing drug
trade and some of the most implacable, dead-eyed killers ever to grace
the pages of a novel.